living in ruins (of a palace within our dreams)
by antarcticas
Summary: He is not okay. She might not be alright, either. - (reylo shorts with no plot and lots of introspection)
1. bloodleaks

_"what if i don't want this fight?"_

The first time they really meet is in a battle of head versus heart, humanity versus the monster inside. She doesn't really want to fight, she never really wants to fight — she just does, because it is a way to survive, and surviving is all that she has ever done.

So she doesn't want to harm but she does. It is cruel, cruel world, and she long ago learned how to survive in it. Self-preservation is her first instinct, and even though the man in the fallen mask is not fighting to kill she's afraid to know what will happen if she gives in to his aura of peaceful loneliness.

She doesn't find out. Soon the battle is hers. And suddenly her rage towards him for abandoning her on Jakku pays off and she watches as he falls onto the ground, crimson pooling around his face. She remembers that face, the face which used to comfort her in times of need. Ben's face.

She can't kill that face. And then suddenly it is all cracking and crumbling and the earth is spewing its hate at her but all she can think about is that she's finally away from him, that she doesn't have to kill him today.

Strangely, she is glad.


	2. carvings

_'i just don't want to forget you'_

He left her on that desert planet years ago, wiping her memory so no one could ever know, would ever know that this little orphaned scavenger was the secret weakness of the mighty Kylo Ren.

When he remembers her face then and now all he can see are the tough smiles and the rough lines that Jakku, with all its hate, has pressed upon her. The days with no food and the ones with no rest and the ones with no love. Each of them is scratched into her wall, marks and marks and marks made with careful precision all yelling out 'someday he'll be back'.

He can almost see it when he looks into her mind—far more than starvation, it was the loneliness that almost broke her soul.

Seeing her pain almost breaks him.


	3. hidingholes

_'things you can't really see'_

Masks are who they are, the ones made of metal and the ones built out of pain.

Protection, protection not from lightsabers or hunger but from showing the world _who they are,_ showing the world their true colors and the scars that are everywhere in their minds. Nobody can know that there are people underneath forgotten truth, people marked in lies and lost love and people who don't want anybody to see what they really look like.

It's hard to travel without hiding when you're so used to being a coward and fleeing reality. She was the first prisoner whom he had brought into his private quarters, the first one he had unmasked for. He didn't know why, but he felt as if he _needed_ her to see who he was. _Needed_ her to understand, _needed_ her to believe everything was for the best.

He needed her to remember the boy he once was rather than the man he had become.

They both wear masks, don't they? Maybe other things about them are the same, too.


	4. loveless

Kylo Ren is not Ben Solo. Ben Solo, he remembers, was a weak, insolent child, one who dared to hope and was crushed, torn apart from the inside out, because he thought his mother's compassion would grow. He was stupid, stupid to believe, he thinks, when he looks back and sees that young youthful face.

Kylo Ren is not stupid. Kylo Ren hopes and hopes and he reaches those aspirations. Kylo Ren does not feel compassion for anyone—he has no mercy, because mercy is for the weak. Having mercy is a trait of a weak man, he knows, and Kylo Ren is strong, unbreakable, and _together._ He is not a Sith yet, but he soon will be. But he is internally one under his leader.

Kylo Ren knows love. And the Jedi, preaching compassion, know nothing of love. Love is raw, passionate, whatever it wants to be—uncontrollable, not under any regulations. He does not feel it for anybody, but he understands the emotion. Leia Organa and Luke Skywalker cannot feel love, trapped as they are underneath their moral ideals, under the idea that _love corrupts._ His grandfather had loved, loved his wife, loved his son, and he had been great. Kylo Ren will be like Darth Vader. He will love.


End file.
